Zoot was digging through the storage closet in his office and found an old box of 3-5/8 x 8˝ statement stuffers. “Hey Marka, should I toss out these pieces we enclosed in our customer’s billing statements at the end of last year? They say ‘Thanks for your business, see you next year!’”

Marka was vacuuming in the hallway near Zoot’s office. “Glad you found those,” she replied. “The beautiful thing is that New Year’s comes …”

“Once a year?” Zoot chuckled.

Marka tossed her straw colored hair to one side. “Since it’s near the end of the calendar year again, why not enclose these in this month’s customer invoices? There are no extra postage and envelope costs because we’re already mailing the invoices anyway.”

In the middle of his end-of-the-year cleaning, Zoot blew dust balls off of old golf equipment buried in the corner of his closet. “We’ve been over this before,” he said in a neutral tone. “The person who pays the bills often isn’t the person who makes fire buying decisions.”

A smile lit up Marka’s face. “Think of it a different way. What does it cost to print and cut a flimsy piece of paper to fit in a #10 envelope? A fraction of a drachma? The cost-per-impression is lower than Hades; I’d be happy if even 1/4 of our recipients were in a position to act on our promotional message.”

“Printing a routing list on each stuffer would increase the chance of the piece reaching the right business influencers,” Zoot suggested. “And we could use the stuffers as an opportunity to up-sell or cross-sell to current customers!”

I speak with too many end recipients who laugh about how they throw away the inserts that come with their phone or cable bill. For roughly the same cost you could redesign the bill into a transpromo piece and include the message right on the transactional document; increasing awareness, response, and cutting down on waste. Frankly, if it’s personalized for the recipient it’s just a much better way of up-selling/cross-selling your existing client.